How Long Do Cut Flowers Actually Last, and How to Make Them Last Longer

The honest answer is that it depends entirely on the flower, and anyone who tells you 'about a week' as a blanket statement is guessing. Soft-petalled blooms like dahlias, poppies and sweet peas will usually give you three to five days at best, even with perfect care. Garden roses and ranunculus will comfortably hit seven to ten days. Australian natives, which is to say banksia, protea and leucadendron, will often outlast two weeks and will still be holding their shape when you finally decide to throw them out. So when a customer emails us on day four to say the bouquet has wilted, the first thing we ask is what was in it, because the answer changes completely depending on the mix. The single biggest mistake people make is not changing the water. It sounds almost too simple to matter, but flowers consume oxygen and the water they sit in becomes a bacterial soup within about thirty-six hours. That bacteria blocks the stem's ability to draw water up, and the flower essentially suffocates while sitting in a full vase. Change the water every second morning, or every morning in summer, and recut about two centimetres off the bottom of every stem at an angle while you are at it. An angled cut gives the stem a much larger surface area to drink through, and a straight cut quite literally sits flat against the bottom of the vase and blocks itself. Strip any leaves that would sit below the waterline. This is non-negotiable. A submerged leaf will rot within a day or two and it will foul the water faster than anything else in the vase. Flower food, the little sachet we tuck into every bouquet, is genuinely worth using. It contains sugar for energy, an acidifier to bring the water pH down to a level bacteria dislike, and a small amount of bleach to keep the water clear. If you have run out, a quarter teaspoon of household bleach and a pinch of sugar in a litre of water will do a surprisingly good job for a couple of days. Position matters more than most people realise. Keep the vase away from direct sun, away from heating vents and air conditioners, and away from the fruit bowl. Ripening fruit releases ethylene gas, which is the same compound that tells a flower it is time to drop its petals, and a bowl of bananas next to your roses will genuinely shorten their life by a day or two. If you follow the routine above, most bouquets will comfortably give you seven to ten days, and native arrangements will keep going for two to three weeks with nothing more than a change of water every second day. If a bouquet wilts well inside those windows despite following the routine, email us a photo and we will take a proper look, because that usually points to something we could have done better at our end.